The Fifth Quadrant

by C. J. Ryan

  “Well, as a matter of fact, I do,” Petra said. “But—”

  “Then take it now—with me! We have a beautiful lodge in the mountains. Have you ever seen Belairus? The most beautiful little world you can imagine. And low-gravity, too—only .82 G. You’ll feel as if you were inflated with helium.”

  “Now that sounds good!” Petra had already kicked off her high heels beneath the table.

  “Then you’ll come?”

  “Spirit, Whit, I don’t know what to say! There’s so much going on, and even with the Quadrant Meeting ending, Gloria may need me to help wrap up some loose ends. I just don’t see how I could leave Sunday. But I could talk to Gloria, and maybe next week, when she goes back to Earth, I could get away for a week or so.”

  Whit shook his head. “No, it must be Sunday.”

  “Why can’t you just delay it a few days?”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t. It must be Sunday. Talk to Gloria about it tomorrow.”

  “Can’t. Gloria’s not here and won’t be back until tomorrow night.”

  “Not here? Where else would she be?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” Petra said. “But it’s important. Whit? I did something good today. Maybe something very good. You asked me what I want? I think what I want is the chance to do something like that every now and then. The chance to make a little difference in the galaxy.”

  “A little difference in the galaxy?” Whit smothered a chuckle in some more wine. “Why not a big difference?”

  Feeling slightly offended by Whit’s reaction, Petra replied, “And what difference have you made? What difference will you ever make?”

  “You never know, Petra Nash,” Whit said, “you never know.”

  Later, Whit took Petra back to his big mansion, up a lavish staircase, and into his bedroom and bed. Petra wriggled out of her minimal clothing, lay back, and shuddered happily as Whit made his way down the length of her body, from the ticklish hollow of her throat to her straining pink nipples, her smooth, slim belly, and the warm, tingling wetness of her groin. He was confident and thorough, and left her gasping in urgent fulfillment.

  Pug had been an ardent and playful lover, and she’d had no complaints, but there had always been something about him that made her think of a boy who thought he was getting away with something—or maybe, not quite getting away with it. It was as if, she thought, he could never really get out from under those murals staring down on him from the ceiling above. But Whit was sure of himself, selfish and, yes, angry. She could feel his anger as he entered her, plunging and pounding himself against her like a wave beating against a shore it desperately desired. A meeting of opposites.

  And when he was finished at last, and lay next to her, panting and drained, he said, “Sunday morning. You’ll come away with me. You must, Petra Nash; you must!”

  GAC 4367-III WAS AN UGLY WORLD. FROM POLAR orbit in the Cruiser, Gloria and her Bugs watched the pea-green landscape slide by beneath them and she felt no desire to descend into that miasma. Here and there, a crenellated range of stunted mountains provided literal relief from the featureless continental masses, and ocean currents had cleared narrow, open arcs of the biological infestation, but all else was algae.

  The terraformers of the old Terrestrial Union had believed that with the proper encouragement, a scumworld such as this might be turned into a garden. A billion years’ worth of decayed algae would provide organic nourishment for muscular, better-evolved terrestrial plants, which would simply take over the planet. Sow some wheat, then step back and watch it grow, free of pests and competition. It had actually worked that way on a few worlds, but more often, the unexpected complications of alien ecosystems frustrated the hopes of the terraformers. GAC 4367-III occupied the attention of Earthbuilders for half a century, until better and easier worlds became available, and the experiment was abandoned. The triumphant algae reclaimed their world from the alien invaders.

  “There’s the terraforming station,” said Volkonski as he and Gloria examined a display screen in the cockpit of the Cruiser. He fiddled with some controls and magnified the image until the sloping rooftop of what seemed to be an immense warehouse stood out against the background slime. The structure seemed to be covered with the algae mats, and only the long shadows of early morning defined its shape and size.

  “I don’t see any sign of people,” Gloria said.

  “I don’t know,” said Volkonski. “We’re getting a faint infrared signature. That building is leaking some heat.”

  “Could it be from an old reactor?” Gloria wondered.

  “Possible. They used uranium reactors in those days. It might still be generating a little heat. We should check for radiation before we enter that building.”

  “That looks like a dock on the shore of the bay.”

  “Right.” Volkonski turned to the pilot, a sandy-haired young man named Erskine. “What do you think?”

  Erskine shrugged inconclusively. “Spirit knows how deep that water is. There’s no channel marked out that I can see. We’d have to land well offshore and hope for the best.”

  “And if anyone is down there,” Volkonski said, “they’d have plenty of time to see us coming. I’d prefer to wait and make a night landing, but it’s early morning at this location. Planetary rotation period is twenty-eight hours, so we’d have to wait fourteen or fifteen hours before we tried it.”

  Gloria shook her head. “We can’t do that. We’d be half a day late getting back to New Cambridge. They might get worried and send another ship. Anyway, our main priority is to find out if the weapons are there and, if they are, to see if any of the big plasma bombs are missing. If they’ve taken one of them to New Cambridge, they could use it as soon as the Emperor arrives, tomorrow night. We have to get down there now, Arkady.”

  “Agreed. You heard the lady, Erskine. Set us down.”

  “Yessir,” said Erskine. “But before I do, there’s one more thing you should be aware of. According to these readings, the atmospheric oxygen content is 29 percent.”

  “Spirit!” Volkonski exclaimed.

  “What’s the problem?” Gloria asked. “We can breathe that, can’t we?”

  “We’ll probably get drunk on it,” said Volkonski, “but yes, we can breathe it. That’s not the problem.”

  “Then what is?”

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am,” said Erskine, “but with 29 percent oxygen in the air, that planet is a fucking tinderbox.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, ma’am. See these brown, splotchy areas scattered around? I think those are burned-out areas, probably from lightning strikes. Any sort of flame would immediately set off a conflagration. Anything that could burn—like the algae mats—would burn, until rains put it out.”

  “What does that mean for us?” Gloria asked.

  “For one thing,” said Volkonski, “it means this entire planet is most definitely a no-smoking area.”

  “Yessir,” said Erskine. “And it also means that our exhaust could start a fire.”

  “But other ships have obviously landed without burning down the planet,” Gloria pointed out.

  “Yes, ma’am. I think we’ll be okay if we come down in the water just offshore. You can see that the wave action has pretty well broken up the algae mats. I don’t think we’d touch off any big conflagration. We’ll use thermoelectric propulsion once we’re in the water, so that should be okay. But we need to be aware that there’s a potential problem.”

  “Thank you for mentioning it, Erskine,” Gloria said. “Anything else we should be worried about?”

  “Rocks just under the water, ma’am. Once we’re down, we’ll be able to spot them with our sonar. But the actual touchdown will be a crapshoot. Come down in the wrong place and we could rip the bottom out of our hull.”

  Gloria sighed in frustration. “If only they’d given us a LASS. It never occurred to me that there could be so many complications in just landing on the damned planet.”

  “T
hat’s the problem with ordering these romantic little excursions,” Volkonski said. “They’re never quite as easy as they sound when you’re giving the orders.”

  “ ‘Ready, fire, aim,’ huh? Sorry, Arkady, I guess I should have thought this through a little better.”

  “If you had,” he said, “we’d be here anyway, doing exactly the same thing. You were right, Gloria. This is a job that has to be done.”

  “Then let’s do it,” she said. “Erskine, let’s shoot some craps.”

  ERSKINE BROUGHT THE CRUISER IN FOR A feather-soft touchdown a mile offshore. As he carefully puttered the craft in toward the dock, Volkonski focused the image-intensifiers on the area and warily scanned the screen.

  “Someone has cleaned off that dock and the area around it,” he said. “People have definitely been here, and more recently than eight centuries ago.”

  “If anyone’s here now, they would have seen or heard us coming in,” said Gloria. “But I don’t see anyone near the dock.”

  “They could be hiding behind those rocks, or farther inland. If I had my druthers, I’d send in a boat with a few men to cover our landing.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “We don’t have enough men to divide our force that way.”

  “So I should have sent a bigger team?”

  Volkonski shook his head. “I should have. Tactical considerations are my job, not yours. Speaking of which, I should go aft and get the squad ready. Keep a watch and sing out if you see anything.”

  Gloria stared intently at the image screen but saw no movement of any kind. There were no birds or insects, no creepers or crawlers. It was a one-celled world.

  “How are we doing, Erskine?”

  “So far, so good, ma’am. Water depth is okay, and the bottom is sandy with a gentle slope. Those Terrestrial Union guys probably surveyed the area and built their dock in a good spot. We should be fine.”

  They were. Erskine expertly guided the vessel toward shore and brought it in snug against the dock. Gloria patted him on the shoulder, then went aft to join Volkonski and his Bugs.

  The five IntSec men and Volkonski wore their standard gray uniforms, pantlegs tucked into black boots, with bulky, glossy helmets packed with electronic gear. Each of them hefted a Mark VI plasma rifle, except for Volkonski, who carried a holstered plasma pistol.

  “Minimum beam setting on all weapons,” Volkonski instructed. “No one fires at anything, for any reason, without my specific order. And if you do have to use your weapons, try to hit the person you’re aiming at and nothing else. And under no circumstances does anyone fire in the direction of that building. Is that clearly understood? We don’t know what’s in there, but if you put a hole in the containment of a plasma bomb, your mothers, wives, and/or sweethearts would be very upset. Any questions?”

  “Where do you want me?” Gloria asked. “Right behind you?”

  “I want you exactly where you are now. In the ship, buttoned up.”

  Gloria started to protest, but one look from Volkonski closed her mouth. “I’m sorry, Arkady,” she said. “You’re in charge. I’ll do as you say. But I want you to keep an open comm link at all times.”

  “Will do. And Gloria? If things go wrong out there, you and Erskine get the hell out of here immediately, understand? Someone can come back for us later, but the vital thing is to get word back to New Cambridge.”

  Gloria nodded. Volkonski gave her a stern look, as if to reinforce the message, then, without another word, turned and hit the control that opened the sliding hatch panel. An airlock was not necessary, since a mass-repulsion field kept the interior and exterior atmospheres separate—at least in theory. But somehow, a pungent waft of the scumworld managed to penetrate into the Cruiser.

  “Phew!” Gloria cried.

  “Hydrogen sulfide from rotting algae,” Volkonski said. “Okay, take a deep breath and let’s go!”

  The Bugs charged out onto the dock, each of them running to a specific spot, as if the whole operation had been choreographed in advance. They knelt and scanned the horizon as Volkonski went out at a dogtrot to the landward end of the dock. Then the first men out ran past Volkonski and stationed themselves in the jumble of rocks onshore. One of them immediately slipped on the slimy algae mats and took a header. He picked himself up, looking chagrined, and Volkonski called out, “Watch where you step!” He looked back at the Cruiser and motioned for Gloria to close the hatch. She watched the Bugs advance for another moment, then reluctantly hit the control to seal up the ship.

  Gloria went forward, where Erskine had already established the comm link with Volkonski. The image on the screen bobbed up and down and from side to side as Volkonski’s helmet moved, and she could hear his heavy breathing. The land sloped upward from the water, and the big building, less than half a mile away, could not be seen from Volkonski’s current location. The Bugs fanned out, slipping and sliding on the algae as they moved. It was not a graceful-looking operation, but the team made steady progress inland.

  “Iglesias! Reynolds!” Volkonski shouted, and the screen showed his arm extended, pointing to locations on either side of what seemed to be a pathway leading upward. The two men hustled to the spots at the top of the rise and threw themselves onto their bellies. Erskine hit a control button, and suddenly Gloria was looking at the scene from Reynolds’s viewpoint. Ahead, the massive structure built by the terraformers of long ago loomed on the horizon. It seemed to have been constructed from sheets of corrugated metal, and there was a large central doorway, currently closed. The entire building was coated with the omnipresent gray-green slime.

  “I got movement!” shouted Iglesias. Erskine switched to his camera, but Gloria saw nothing amiss.

  “Here, too!” called Reynolds. Now, Erskine called up a split-screen image, and they could see the view from the positions of both Bugs. Gloria thought she could see a flicker of motion near some rocks in the mid distance.

  “I make it three…check that, four unknowns, at three hundred meters,” Reynolds reported. “They’ve got some kind of camo on, hard to see.”

  “Visors,” Volkonski ordered. Immediately, the view on the screen switched to the ghostly, green glow of infrared imaging. Now Gloria could plainly make out at least three human forms crouching near some boulders scattered to the front. Volkonski advanced and took a position next to Reynolds. Gloria saw his hand at the edge of Reynolds’s screen, his index finger pointing toward a little swale ten meters ahead. As Reynolds scrambled forward, there was a muffled bang from somewhere, and the image from the Bug’s camera suddenly showed nothing but algae and mud.

  “Shit! I’m hit!”

  “Stay down!” Volkonski shouted. “Byerly, Mitsui, go get him! Gordon, Iglesias, covering fire! Over their heads! I don’t want to start any fires, but let’s show ’em we’ve got some teeth!”

  The dazzling bursts of plasma overloaded the imagers for a moment. To the sound of grunts, heavy breathing, and a pained moan, Byerly and Mitsui dragged Reynolds back to the near side of the rise. Volkonski knelt over his man, and the screen showed Reynolds’s anguished face and then the ripped fabric of his uniform and the dark stain spreading from his right shoulder.

  “Flèchettes,” Volkonski muttered. “Figures—they don’t want to start any fires, either. Relax, Reynolds, it probably hurts like a son of a bitch, but it’s not that bad. You’re going to be fine.” Volkonski looked around. “Gordon, Iglesias! What do you see?”

  “Still just the four of ’em, sir! Not moving.”

  “Okay, keep watching, and if they try to move, fire more warning bursts. Gloria?”

  “Right here, Arkady.”

  “I think we’ve got an answer to our main question.”

  “I think you’re right. What do you recommend?”

  “Under the circumstances, our plasma weapons are useless, but they can use their flèchettes. I think we should pull back to the Cruiser and get the hell out of here.”

  “Understood,” Gloria rep
lied. She still wanted to get into that building and see if any plasma bombs were missing, but that no longer seemed possible. Arkady was right: Their only mission now was to get back to New Cambridge and report what had happened.

  Volkonski issued the necessary orders, and Byerly and Mitsui carried Reynolds back to the dock, while Gordon and Iglesias remained at the top of the rise to provide covering fire if necessary. Then he ordered Gordon and Iglesias to fall back. Gloria opened the hatch and stood to one side as Byerly and Mitsui came in with Reynolds and gently placed him on one of the bunks. The young man was alternately gritting his teeth and gasping for breath, but when he saw Gloria, he tried to smile. She returned the smile and squeezed his hand. It was covered with slime.

  “Sorry ’bout that, ma’am,” he said. Gloria blinked back tears and said nothing.

  A moment later, Volkonski, Gordon, and Iglesias came tumbling into the Cruiser. Volkonski smacked the hatch control with his palm and shouted to the pilot, “Get us out of here, Erskine!”

  The bass rumble of the engines vibrated through the ship, and the vessel gently lurched into motion. Then Erskine cried, “We’re under fire!” Volkonski and Gloria dashed forward.

  “Plasma burst into the water,” Erskine said. “Damn, another one!”

  Volkonski checked the external imagers. “And one behind us, too. Hold where we are, Erskine.”

  “Yessir!”

  “Two of them,” said Volkonski as he examined the screen, “up there at the top of the rise.”

  “What can we do?” Gloria asked.

  “Not one damn thing,” Volkonski said between his clenched teeth. “They want the ship. They could put a hole through the hull anytime they want and prevent us from taking off, but they haven’t done that. They want us to stay here and they want the ship intact.”

  “Can’t we fire back?”

  “No external weaponry on this tub. We could open the hatch and start a fire out there with a plasma burst, but they’d still have time to burn us. What we seem to have here is an old-fashioned Mexican standoff.”